


The Open Connection

by unbelievable2



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Thursday Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-31
Updated: 2014-01-31
Packaged: 2018-01-10 17:02:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1162268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unbelievable2/pseuds/unbelievable2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The past is not gone for good. A fic for the Sentinel Thursday challenge #493 "Ladder"</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Open Connection

By the time they got there the sun was already setting, approaching the top of the mesa opposite. In a short while, the buildings in this section of cliff would be in shadow. The terrace dwellings, with their rounded corners and windows like empty eyes, crouched under the mesa overhang like some kind of weird filling in a giant stone sandwich. Jim watched as Blair stood on the wide, flat, rock surface in front of the ancient walls and turned slowly in a circle, his arms outstretched, clearly drinking in the surroundings. They were alone. This was a section of cliff that few were allowed to visit; certainly not run-of-the-mill tourists, who would in any case have already left the visitor trails for their campsites and motels.  
  
“Good, huh?” asked Blair, catching his gaze. His eyes were shining with the exhilaration of the moment.  
  
Jim had looked at many exceptional photographs before this trip, had even read carefully-marked sections in books that Blair had artfully left in his way, to try to understand what he would be looking at, and why these structures ignited Blair’s enthusiasm to such a degree. He had listened with great patience during the drive down there to Blair’s lectures about the peoples of this region and the story of those who built these amazing places – repeated so often that Jim realised that he had absorbed the facts as if by osmosis. But he now found that nothing had, or indeed could have, really prepared him for the experience of being close to these ancient dwellings crammed into their monumental surroundings, and the clear evidence of people from long ago making a place to live.  
  
“Stunning, Chief, truly stunning.”  
  
Blair grinned his delight at Jim’s response and went back to his scrutiny of the buildings, with a running commentary clearly intended for Jim’s benefit.  
  
“A number of the structures here were for ceremonial purposes, they think. But there were dwelling houses too. Do you see the hand-holds? To help people climb up to the upper storeys?”  
  
And Jim could indeed see the half-moon shapes cut into the rock and then worn smooth by more than a thousand years of use and weather.  
  
“Of course, they would have climbed up more conventionally too. See that ladder? Well, obviously it’s not an original, but that fishbone design – that would have been an early design of ladder that these people would have likely used. The Pueblo Indians use them still.”  
  
Jim dutifully looked, moving closer to the stone walls to inspect them. He found his attention diverted constantly by a multitude of sensations. The afternoon breeze was playful, with a hint of night’s chill to warn of the coming darkness, and it brought with it the scent of the sage scrub from the mesa top. He could hear it rustling the small trees in the canyon below.  
  
But most of all he was captivated by the colours that surrounded him – ochres, reds, almost-blues where the sun was excluded, and the smudge of greens hinting at algae doggedly surviving in the shadows, or the touch of minerals. He brought his concentration back again to focus on Blair’s words, peering in as best he could at the lower openings in the dwellings.  
  
“Kinda small inside, Chief,” he offered. Blair had by now moved out further towards the rock rim, better to look back at the whole.  
  
“They were a small people, Jim. The men below five-five, the women just over five foot, on average.”  
  
“You would have felt right at home, then.”  
  
He grinned at his friend, and though Blair’s face was in shadow as he stood with his back to the sun, Jim saw the other man stick out his tongue, like a kid, in response. He leaned back against the warm stone.  
  
“And these have been empty how long?”  
  
“Close on 800 years now. The Ancient Pueblo peoples - some refer to them as the Anasazi – started building in this area in around 600, but by 1200 they were gone. We think the climate changed, there was more drought, and they couldn’t produce enough food to keep themselves going.”  
  
Jim’s question was as much to hear Blair talk as for the information itself. He watched his friend as he paced in front of the dwellings, totally wrapped up in his subject. In the long drive down to the Four Corners area the growing heat had resulted in the phenomenon of Blair shedding layer after layer of clothes on a daily basis. Now he stood on the rock rim in sandals, a pair of cut-offs and a loose cotton shirt that rippled in the breeze, the sleeves short and showing tanned forearms.  
  
“Then they disappeared. We know that these people formed the basis of many other later cultures in the wider region, but as a culture in themselves the Anasazi ceased to exist. They had no writing, all that’s left is their pottery, their basket-ware – wonderful basket-ware! – and their structures. And although some people have sporadically lived on the mesa tops, these dwellings haven’t been lived in since the Ancient Enemies left.”  
  
Around his neck was a twisted leather thong bearing bone and turquoise beads that Jim had bought him some days previously at a roadside stall. The gift had been offered shyly, and accepted with equal shyness, but with such a look of delight that Jim found he had had to turn suddenly away to inspect some painted gourds on a nearby stall to hide his own blushes. He hadn’t regretted the gift, though, feeling only a strange sense of pride that Blair wore it still, day and night, and that it suited so well the elemental and yet complex man that was his friend.  
  
“The ‘Ancient Enemies’?”  
  
“Yeah, that’s what the other peoples - the later Pueblo communities - called them. Or, ‘the Ancient Aliens’. Cool, huh? There’s always been this air of mystery about the people who lived here.”  
  
“And they built all this,” mused Jim, “and then left it all behind.”  
  
“No use having great buildings if you haven’t got anything to eat, man. Or can’t find game to hunt ‘cos it’s got too arid for animals to live. It wasn’t a sudden catastrophe, we know that. Just a gradual disuse as life became more difficult. Their Sentinels would have warned them about the coming changes; they would have sensed it in the seasons and the pattern of game movements.”  
  
“Sentinels, huh?”  
  
Jim couldn’t help but let the affectionate amusement creep into his voice. Blair gave him an arch look.  
  
“Well, yeah, man, why not? Sentinel senses are a genetic refinement within the species _homo sapiens_. Wherever you find our species, there Sentinels will be, my promise.”  
  
“Genetic refinement? Makes a change from throwback….”  
  
Blair grinned at him.  
  
“Pretty ancient refinement, though, remember. Look, we probably better get back up the cliff before it gets too dark. Don’t want to take a tumble, nor do I want to push my academic credentials too far on this. The site team are allowing us fantastic privileges as it is. We can come back tomorrow and look again. I just wanted to get the whole experience right away. You know, the sunset, the solitude….”  
  
“I know exactly, Chief. Because… well because, you know, I don’t feel they’re gone.”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“The Ancient Aliens, whatever you want to call them. The buildings feel like they’re just waiting for them to come back, like they’ve only been out for a day’s hunt.”  
  
“You feel that, huh?”  
  
“Yeah, I.. oh, goddammit, Sandburg, this isn’t Sentinel sense here!”  
  
“Why not, Jim? You, if anyone, would be able to feel any presence, any sense memory, adhering to these walls. These were times when the temporal and the spiritual were far more entwined than they are today. We’ve lost that connection - that level of consciousness - in the main, to our eternal shame and loss. But someone like you…”  
  
Jim was no longer listening. Hands flat against the rock, he looked out towards Blair and saw him as a shadowed form outlined by the dark oranges and reds of the sunset. The light caught the tips of his hair as he moved his head, and it touched the edges of his mobile hands, and it seemed like they sent out sparks. His chest was bare now, the turquoise thong still clearly visible, and buckskin was slung loose around his hips. Jim blinked, but the image didn’t change.  
  
And then he felt it. A vibration in his hands where they rested on the warm stone, a vibration that built into a hum, and then more and more insistent until he could almost make out the notes of a chant.  
  
“The rock is singing to me,” said Jim, in a disbelieving voice. Blair just smiled.  
  
“Of course it is, Jim.”  
  
And Jim stood there, letting the sight and sounds sink into him.  
  
“Hey?” asked the other man, and then:  
“Hey.” No longer a question, just an affirmation of the other’s presence.  
  
Jim pushed himself off the rock and stepped forward to join his friend. He felt the breeze chill but welcome on his bare chest; he felt his own hair brushing at his shoulders, and the stone warm on the soles of his feet.  
  
The connection wasn’t dead. It was open, always open.  
  
And he knew what the world was like when it was young.

_-FIN-_

_A/N: It’s a long time since I travelled in the Four Corners area, and specifically the ancient sites of Colorado and New Mexico, but I hope I’ve done some justice here to the magic of those places._


End file.
